Monsters Love Gum
Delicious, delicious gumballs...
Posted October 12, 2010
I remember playing Hungry, Hungry Hippos with my sister and best friend when we were kids. We would pound on those little plastic chomper tools frantically trying to get all the white plastic balls inside our hippo’s stomach. It was a ridiculous concept for a game, but insanely fun. Enter Monsters Love Gum from developer Sorta Precision Technologies, a hi-tech version of the HHH concept created for the iPad. The presentation of Monsters Love Gum is very light, bouncy and jovial, likely targeting children for its target audience.
There are two modes of play in Monsters Love Gum, Battle and Hoarder. In Battle mode, you are grabbing as many as gumballs as possible, regardless of color, and competing for the highest score. In Hoarder mode, you are selectively waiting for specific colored gumballs to cross your path and are punished for eating the wrong color. There are four monsters to choose from during a match with great names like “Blob” Bob, Melvin “Garbage Breath” (who shares a slight resemblance to Seth Rogan’s B.O.B. in Monsters vs. Aliens), Ted “The Tongue” and “Laser-Eye” Larry. Each monster has strengths and weaknesses regarding reach and speed. You can setup matches as Sudden Death, Best of 3 or Best of 7. You can also set the number of balls required to win the match. If you are looking for the frantic pacing of HHH, Battle mode is probably your best bet. I actually enjoyed Hoarder mode more though. The slower paced gameplay is definitely more strategic and matches have a longer life span than Battle mode.
Different from Hungry, Hungry Hippos, you have the ability to mess with your opponents during a match with the Special Features. Special Features are gained during the match by collecting the purple gumballs on the game board. They include one-time use abilities like tilting the arena platform to roll all the gumballs your way, smashing opponent’s special features, stunning opponent’s so they can’t move for 5 seconds, clearing the entire field with a tornado or bombing opponent’s so they lose a gumball. These abilities are populated on your side of the game board next to your monster. You simply tap on them to activate and let them run loose on the board. It’s a great way to bring a higher level of competition and strategy into the mix, but matches often end too quickly to take advantage of the better powers. That being said, it’s particularly chaotic for four people to be using all their powers at once and makes for an entertaining time.
The controls are easy to understand and the layout of the menus work perfectly. The game comes with OpenFient compatibility for tracking your progress on the global leaderboards as well as achievements to earn during your matches. There are plenty of achievements that include tasks like winning games with all the monsters, revealing all the snapshots, winning tournaments, using a certain number of Special Features or grabbing specifically colored gumballs. It’s a pretty hefty set that will require a great deal of time to earn.
Monsters Love Gum is a game that’s more enjoyable for young children rather than adults. They will love the brightly colored screen and likely have the motor skills to keep up with the fast paced gameplay. It’s also a game that’s more fun with friends as the CPU players tend to be too easy to knock off. If you have two or more kids, I wouldn’t hesitate to download Monsters Love Gum ($2.99) for them (assuming you let them use the iPad). Just don’t expect to relive the days of your childhood and your fond memories of Hungry, Hungry Hippos as Monsters Love Gum will likely overwhelm the older crowd.
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There are two modes of play in Monsters Love Gum, Battle and Hoarder. In Battle mode, you are grabbing as many as gumballs as possible, regardless of color, and competing for the highest score. In Hoarder mode, you are selectively waiting for specific colored gumballs to cross your path and are punished for eating the wrong color. There are four monsters to choose from during a match with great names like “Blob” Bob, Melvin “Garbage Breath” (who shares a slight resemblance to Seth Rogan’s B.O.B. in Monsters vs. Aliens), Ted “The Tongue” and “Laser-Eye” Larry. Each monster has strengths and weaknesses regarding reach and speed. You can setup matches as Sudden Death, Best of 3 or Best of 7. You can also set the number of balls required to win the match. If you are looking for the frantic pacing of HHH, Battle mode is probably your best bet. I actually enjoyed Hoarder mode more though. The slower paced gameplay is definitely more strategic and matches have a longer life span than Battle mode.
Different from Hungry, Hungry Hippos, you have the ability to mess with your opponents during a match with the Special Features. Special Features are gained during the match by collecting the purple gumballs on the game board. They include one-time use abilities like tilting the arena platform to roll all the gumballs your way, smashing opponent’s special features, stunning opponent’s so they can’t move for 5 seconds, clearing the entire field with a tornado or bombing opponent’s so they lose a gumball. These abilities are populated on your side of the game board next to your monster. You simply tap on them to activate and let them run loose on the board. It’s a great way to bring a higher level of competition and strategy into the mix, but matches often end too quickly to take advantage of the better powers. That being said, it’s particularly chaotic for four people to be using all their powers at once and makes for an entertaining time.
The controls are easy to understand and the layout of the menus work perfectly. The game comes with OpenFient compatibility for tracking your progress on the global leaderboards as well as achievements to earn during your matches. There are plenty of achievements that include tasks like winning games with all the monsters, revealing all the snapshots, winning tournaments, using a certain number of Special Features or grabbing specifically colored gumballs. It’s a pretty hefty set that will require a great deal of time to earn.
Graphics
- Visually, the game is brightly colored and flush with animation during a match; it's really quite charming. The animated effects, like the roving tornado, look pretty amazing on the giant iPad screen. But as beautifully cartoonish as the game is designed, it will often feel like sensory overload. It’s tough to focus on the entire game board during the match due to all the distractions. One complaint with the visuals is that object detection, specifically the tongue snatching in gumballs, seems a bit too loose. I was pulling in gumballs that weren’t even close to my monster’s tongue at times. The menu system also slightly hangs when clicking to load a new screen.
Audio
- The audio work is pretty zany and fits the crazy monster theme. Sound effects take center stage here and are fired endlessly during the match. The light musical numbers also capture the feel of the game.
Conclusion
Monsters Love Gum is a game that’s more enjoyable for young children rather than adults. They will love the brightly colored screen and likely have the motor skills to keep up with the fast paced gameplay. It’s also a game that’s more fun with friends as the CPU players tend to be too easy to knock off. If you have two or more kids, I wouldn’t hesitate to download Monsters Love Gum ($2.99) for them (assuming you let them use the iPad). Just don’t expect to relive the days of your childhood and your fond memories of Hungry, Hungry Hippos as Monsters Love Gum will likely overwhelm the older crowd.
Discuss This Game on Our Official VGT Forum